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Thanks for Every Kind Word

Over the past few months I’ve felt gratitude for friends both old and new. Growing up in an alcoholic family and striving with a disability I learned nothing about thankfulness. If I thought about it at all I thought it was indebtedness—surely gratitude was dangerous—a slowing down when speed meant everything.

I’m thankful to have written a book about a remarkable dog—a harder thing than it sounds because the actual topic of the memoir was gratitude. While working on an early draft I described the project to a friend who said “where’s the drama?” He was right to ask. And I couldn’t answer. Learning to love the world with a dog is not a customary narrative. I was writing about how I changed on the inside and for the better.

That so many people have written me to say how much Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet’s Journey has moved them means more to me than I can easily say. Gratitude is acknowledgment, recognition, a mirroring. Properly understood it means we’re together as we express satisfaction.

In Columbus, Ohio last weekend I had the privilege of speaking on two panels at the Ohioana Book Festival. The first session was about dogs and books—the subject isn’t as simple as you’d think—what do dogs mean to us? I still don’t know the answer. I know I merely know I’m better off for all the dogs in my life and not just my guide dogs.

The second session was more prosaic. It had to do with how we write. My fellow panelists were more practical than I was. They had useful things to say about researching topics, plotting their stories, joining writing groups, etc. All I could say was: “I get up early. Drink coffee. Throw words like Jackson Pollock throwing paint….and wait to see what happens….”

I’ve had a hard life. Lord knows my new memoir details some of it. But what a remarkable moment I’m having—and it’s not about me! I set out to write a love poem in prose for my first guide dog Corky. What I managed to do was write about curiosity, joy, and spontaneity, three things dogs know better than we do.

So here’s to all my friends who’ve written me, tweeted, posted, sent emails, texted—and here’s to the folks I’m getting to know. We’re in this life and affirming why we are respectively, often privately grateful for animal joy and poetry.

ABOUT: Stephen Kuusisto is the author of the memoirs Have Dog, Will Travel; Planet of the Blind (a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year”); and Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening and of the poetry collections Only Bread, Only Light and Letters to Borges. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and a Fulbright Scholar, he has taught at the University of Iowa, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and Ohio State University. He currently teaches at Syracuse University where he holds a University Professorship in Disability Studies. He is a frequent speaker in the US and abroad. His website is StephenKuusisto.com.